There are some physical activities that have logical necessity: if something strikes, something is stricken, etc. But what physical activity that goes through distinct steps or stages has logical necessity?
It seems that determinism is an attempt to impute logical necessity to the physical, though this identification is only plausible when we consider the universe as a whole.
The premises not only make the conclusion logically necessary when the premises are given, but also generate the conclusion with a logical necessity. No individual physical process is like this, nor is any aggregate of some part of them, though there is some attempt to make the totality of them such, i.e. determinism.
Leo White said,
February 16, 2013 at 8:49 am
Enjoying your blog. Re the above post: is logical necessity the same as found in math? 2+3=5 seems to be true necessarily. I ask this because determinists are probably impressed by the statement of laws of nature in mathematical language: they may be imputing the necessity attending 2+3=5 and the like to statements about acceleration, force, movement, etc.